Fire Sidebar: Final Third Leads to Three Points

BRIDGEVIEW, IL–The Chicago Fire has been missing ways to score goals in its last five matches. They needed to find ways to create and finish in the final third of the field one way or another. The club didn’t give up on itself and has kept working day in and day out through practices and its recent matches. The Fire hasn’t put together many victories recently, but they were able to pick up a point at a time with some draws.

On Saturday night, Chicago went on to defeat Inter Miami CF, 3-1, at SeatGeek Stadium, which gave them three points. It also has moved the Fire closer to Eastern Conference playoff line with four matches remaining on its schedule.

“I think one of the things we did tonight that we were lacking, especially these last five games.” Chicago Fire head coach Ezra Hendrickson said. “I mean, it shows on the sheet, you know, we haven’t scored. A lot of times we create chances that we’re not taking. We haven’t been very efficient all year in the final third, as far as putting balls in the back of the net.

“So that’s something that we’ve got to continue to do these next four games, because we’ve shown that we can sometimes keep a clean sheet, sometimes one, two goals, but we’re missing on that other end, putting the ball in the back of the net. So that’s something we got to improve on, because for a team with 12 shutouts, we should be higher up the table. That has a lot to do with us not taking our chances when we had them. And sometimes, especially on the road, when you don’t take those chances, you end up losing those games.”

At this point of the season, Chicago as a club needs to find some consistency and find ways to get goals. They have the players to do it, it’s just a matter of making it happen for its remaining matches.

“We have to continue to get better in the final third, and not just in the final third but in transition, from mid third to the final third,” Hendrickson said. “Sometimes, we defend really well, we win the ball, and we don’t keep it. So, past couple of practices, we talked about our transition, from when we win the ball, getting into the front half, getting into the final third and then being efficient there, being effective there.

“I thought tonight we did that. That third goal was a very good example of us winning the ball, transitioning and getting Jhon in one-on-one with the keeper. So, I think for us it’s just scoring our goals, taking our chances, it’s got to be the focus these next four games. Because we’re going to get chances, but we’ve just got to be efficient in what we do with them, because we’ve shown that we can be very good at keeping teams off the scoresheet.”

Jhon Duran scored two of the three goals and now has 5 on the season. He scored on a well-placed header and on the run from beyond midfield let his speed take over to beat the keeper 1 v 1 for a breakaway goal.

“I felt really good,” Duran said. “Well, hard work, we have to keep working. The truth is that today the team was excellent. We were compact in all the lines. Well, at one point we were kind of getting kind of tied up, on the 2-1, the penalty, but we were able to manage that, and we carried the game forward, which was the important thing.”

Xherdan Shaqiri had the other Fire goal, he was one of the midfielders that had the ability to create and get the ball into the final third. Which seemed much different than the previous games which the Fire broke a scoreless draught of 442 minutes.

“We need to be more ruthless in front of the goal,” Shaqiri said. “We need to understand each other better, the last pass needs to be better sometimes. This is the thing that we need to do and what we need do better. Because we need goals, and we need three points. But we need to score goals, and this is the point that we need to understand each other better and when you see a better player standing there to play and then we score. Sometimes we are too selfish, let’s say like this. But today was good, three points, that was the most important thing.”

We’ll see what happens over the next 4 matches. Every point is crucial for the push to the playoffs at this point. Just like every goal scored will be important for a trip into the postseason for the Fire.